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- 🔵 Sen. Menendez JAILED
🔵 Sen. Menendez JAILED
Citizen Frank
January 29, 2025
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Good morning. It’s Wednesday, January 29.
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Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison for selling his once-considerable clout in Washington for gold bars, a luxury car and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash bribes.
Prosecutors have asked a federal judge to give the Democrat 15 years behind bars for crimes that include acting as an agent of the Egyptian government.
Menendez’s lawyers said he deserved less than two years in prison, citing his decades of public service and a life largely well-lived after the son of Cuban immigrants rose from poverty to become “the epitome of the American Dream.”
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HHS Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden were involved in a tense exchange on Capitol Hill where Kennedy accused the senator of intentionally misrepresenting his past comments.
Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee which held a confirmation hearing for Kennedy on Wednesday, pressed the nominee on comments made on podcasts in recent years.
“During a podcast interview in July of 2023, you said, quote, no vaccine is safe and effective, in your testimony today in order to prove you’re not anti-vax, you note that all your kids are vaccinated, but in a podcast in 2020, you said, and I quote, you would do anything pay anything to go back in time and not vaccinate your kids,” Wyden said to Kennedy.
The White House on Wednesday formally rescinded a controversial memo that had ordered a freeze on federal grants and loans to give agencies time to review programs for their compliance with President Donald Trump’s agenda, NBC News reported.
The freeze, which had been set to take effect late Tuesday afternoon, was paused by a federal judge until Monday to give her time to consider arguments by nonprofit groups challenging its legality.
The memo ordering the freeze had been issued by the Office of Management and Budget. It immediately sparked confusion about which programs would be affected and was suspected of causing Medicaid reimbursement portals to go offline for all 50 states on Tuesday.
The Justice Department (DOJ) on Wednesday moved to dismiss former special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, President Trump’s former co-defendants in his classified documents case.
It’s the latest sign that the Justice Department is moving swiftly to wipe any proceedings in connection with the criminal cases that had involved Trump.
The cases against Nauta and De Oliveira were still pending, even as the criminal case against Trump had already been tossed out.
A Massachusetts man was arrested near the U.S. Capitol on Monday, according to court documents indicating that the suspect confessed to carrying weapons and revealed a plot to assassinate high-ranking government officials, including newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
The suspect, 34-year-old Ryan Michael “Reily” English, was detained outside the Capitol at around 3 p.m. on Jan. 27 after voluntarily surrendering to officers, per an affidavit filed in court the next day.
English told officers he was carrying multiple knives and two Molotov cocktails, with law enforcement later confirming that the incendiary devices were constructed using vodka bottles with cloth wicks soaked in hand sanitizer, according to U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) Special Agent Peter Campopiano, who prepared the affidavit.
President Donald Trump signed the Laken Riley Act into law Wednesday, marking the first piece of legislation to become law in his second administration.
“This horrific atrocity should never have been allowed to happen,” Trump told reporters Wednesday ahead of signing the legislation. “And as president, I’m fighting every single day to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again.”
The measure, which advanced through the House and Senate in January, directs Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain illegal immigrants arrested or charged with theft-related crimes, or those accused of assaulting a police officer.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) introduced a bill Tuesday seeking to add President Trump’s face to the Mount Rushmore monument.
“His remarkable accomplishments for our country and the success he will continue to deliver deserve the highest recognition and honor on this iconic national monument,” Luna wrote in a Tuesday post on the social platform X.
“Let’s get carving!”
A yearlong outbreak of tuberculosis in the Kansas City, Kansas area has taken local experts aback, even if it does not appear to be the largest outbreak of the disease in U.S. history as a state health official claimed last week.
“We would expect to see a handful of cases every year,” said Dr. Dana Hawkinson, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Kansas Health System. But the high case counts in this outbreak were a “stark warning,” he said.
The outbreak has killed two people since it started in January 2024, Kansas state health department spokeswoman Jill Bronaugh said. Health officials in Kansas say there is no threat to the general public.
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